


What's Done is Done

by heylifeitsemily



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 06:44:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10611408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heylifeitsemily/pseuds/heylifeitsemily
Summary: “Why did you do it?”“What does it matter now?”She gives a pragmatic sigh, fingers dancing around the bottle’s mouth. “What’s done is done. We have both suffered the,” her hand stills and then retracts, “consequences of my decision. You have no reason to lie.”“And if I reveal an unsavoury truth?”Her jaw tightens. “What’s done is done,” she repeats.





	

It is cliché, but the air around him cools as she steps in, her shadow dancing in the firelight as she places, or rather, slams a bottle of wine on the table and falls into the chair across from him. Her feet come up to rest on the table, her grasp slackening on the bottle's neck as she stares at the flames. A sort of resolve forms in the depths of her eyes, and she takes another swig before inclining the vessel in his direction, not bothering to turn to him.

“Drink,” she orders.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I,” she falters, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. She softens but averts her gaze again. “I imagine you need it as much as I tonight.”  
  
She leans it towards him once more, and Loghain intends to let her stew before obliging. Seconds pass. She shows no sign of uncertainty.

Their fingers meet as he takes it from her, the deep red liquid bitter and hollow in his mouth. He takes in the disheveled hair curling about her shoulders, the twist of green ink visible on her cheek. He sees grace and youth coupled with determination and lethality, and in turn muses on what she finds when her measured look is drawn to him. Carnage and malice? Age? Insight? Broken pieces to be stitched whole? He supposes he is both none of these things and all of them; he is unknowable to her – first a paradox of heroic tales and villainous betrayal, and then a tool, honourably fought for and won.

Now, dressed in her simple leathers and fabrics, reclining amiably, she has deemed him an ally. The lines defining him blur further.

He drinks in silence, her fingers drumming against the wooden table. Minutes pass with naught but the sound of breathing and the crackle of sparks.  

“Why did you do it?”

Her voice breaks out into the silence with the strength of a demand, but he values forwardness, and if this is a conversation she must have, then she must do more than barely allude to _it._ He waits, patiently, watches her shoulders tense.  
  
“Ostagar,” she clarifies, and though she meant to spit it out with venomous intent, it comes as a breathy whisper, a burning confession of the simple need _to know_.

“What does it matter now?”

She gives a pragmatic sigh, fingers dancing around the bottle’s mouth. “What’s done is done. We have both suffered the,” her hand stills and then retracts, “consequences of my decision. You have no reason to lie.”

He recalls the way she recoiled as Maric’s bastard seethed at her when she insisted to duel, but more telling was the way the assassin came to her side, a steady hand on her shoulder as the boy stalked off to his chambers. Abandoning his sworn post for a personal vendetta, placing revenge over reason. He would have made a poor King.

She showed wisdom in denying him the crown.

“And if I reveal an unsavoury truth?”

Her jaw tightens. “What’s done is done,” she repeats.

Darkspawn pour onto the battlefield with axes and arrows and spells, viscera and blood raining across the humble meadows. There is ceaseless screaming, as though the chorus of shouts are one unified voice rather than the final calls for mercy from innumerable men. They fall unceremoniously and in waves, cries of battle morphing into the last whimpers of the living dead before tapering off into unending silence. Cailan’s eyes are impossibly wide as he writhes in the ogre’s grasp, and then his spine is snapped in two, and he tossed with no more care than one would warrant the remains of a meal.

His men stand behind him. They await his signal.

“Cailan was an adventure-hardy fool,” he begins, expecting a scoff at best and violence at worst. He is surprised to see her expression go unchanged save for an encouraging nod and her lips pursing in thought. He watches her carefully as he continues. “He charged into battle as though it were the playful foray of young stewards armed with wooden swords, and he and his allies died for his arrogance and naivety.”

She dares to meet his eyes, appraising, and he expects every facet of his righteous fury lies bare on his face, legible for all of Thedas to witness and scorn. Again, she only nods, her pupils losing focus as she stares both at him and far beyond him.

He imagines she sees overlapping versions of him, the rational commander against the self-assured turncoat, and though they are incongruent, they are not the irreconcilable actions of a man steeled through hardship and resentment. They are reflections of the same consciousness thrust into situations with no winning outcome. He would make the same decisions again and again.

“It was a dying battle,” he says, the thought voiced of its own accord. She startles at the sound, the first crack in her seemingly uncrackable composure, and when she returns from whatever trance she had fallen into, deep brown meeting faint blue, her mouth falls open. Her gaze drops to the tabletop, and his, unbidden, to her lips, tracing their cupid’s bow with the unabashed shame only an inebriated man can muster. He withdraws, glaring at the fire and taking another drink.

Unbeknownst to him, she ponders the sincerity in his expression, the genuine grief in the inelegant twist of his mouth and the furrow of his brow. He says nothing else, but he does not need to. She rises from the chair, the heels of her palms supporting her weight as she leans forward over the table.

The silence is heavy with her unofficial judgement, and it is finally, graciously broken with an exhale of breath. He does not know what to make of it, but somewhere in the back of his mind it is construed as a gentle laugh.

“If only you were wholly despicable,” she says. Her tone is remorseful, soft yet loud in the encased silence of the estate, and in her eyes, he finds regret and sorrow in spades. She turns from him wordlessly, her step steady until she delays at the door, her hand bracing itself against the frame. She peeks at him over her shoulder, face half covered by a curtain of deep brown hair.

“Finish the bottle and sleep,” she tells him. “If you’re lucky, you’ll get a decent amount of rest before the alcohol is burnt out of your system and the dreams begin.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I have had my fair share of nightmares, Warden Tabris.”

Perhaps it is a mere trick of the dancing firelight, but for the slightest of moments he sees a rueful smile on her face, jaw tight but lip quirked at the corner and a mischievous glint to her eye. Then it crumbles into something forlorn.  
  
He is elder than she, yes, but not so immeasurably old as to have the luxury of forgetting. He remembers the terrible things, the depraved and devastating, the murderous and chaotic, and they plague his waking conscience in every emotion that roars in his chest and each clipped syllable parting his lips. But the most terrible things, the truly terrible, are not the horrors themselves. They are the moments in between, the stories exchanged over campfires and makeshift stew, the playful bets, the drinks passed around the tavern as a Bard serenades the crowd. The beautiful moments soiled by time and fate.  
  
“I had thought so too,” she says, but it is not spoken in response to him so much as it tumbles from her lips uncontrolled. Mournful. Her knuckles have gone white on the door frame, and as if returning to herself, she blinks rapidly, grip loosening.

“Good night, Loghain,” she whispers.  
  
“Good night, Warden."

He drinks the wine, yet the night is restless just the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Characters who straddle the line between anti-hero and villain are so interesting to write. I always have hopes to write continuations to these things but right now, no ideas. Any and all feedback is appreciated, even if its just to point out a spelling mistake, because these are so very un-beta'd. Hope you liked it!


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